Valentine's Day Dick Pic Advice from a Dick Pic Critic

Valentine’s Day is a time for wooing, romancing, and sending dick pics to special ladies. But many are the pitfalls that can keep your genital self-portrait from finding its mark in your beloved’s heart. Such as a dirty room, hamburger buns, and what Madeline Holden, who runs the Tumblr Critique My Dick Pic (very NSFW) calls the &#x201C;log.&#x201D; She’s not accepting submissions at the moment—&#x201C;I’m truly drowning in dick pics&#x201D;—but recently took some time from her busy schedule of looking at penises to share some of her hard-won advice on hard ones.

Tell us, Dick Pic Lady—how do I take a dick pic for that special someone?

Tailor it to what you think she’d be into. Think about framing and lighting and composing the shot. It’s supposed to be erotic.

I think guys generally think of dicks as punchlines to jokes, not as erotic objects. Dicks are funny.

Yeah, they are, and I do get some funny dick pics, which I think is a sub-goal for some people, but the pic should be hot. A dick pic that’s in the spirit of a dick pic should at least be turning on the recipient a little. I think you can be witty, but when you go too far on the gag side of things, like putting your dick in a hamburger bun, you evaporate the erotic appeal. So put your hand in the picture. Hold your dick. That’s hot.

So that leaves the other hand holding the camera. What kind of angle makes me look like I have a massive piece of action down there?

Don’t take a bird’s-eye view shot with your dick taking up the whole frame. Just looking down at yourself and taking a snap—that’s what a remarkable number of guys still do. It’s very boring. I don’t know why guys have been allowed to get away with doing that for so long.

Because guys are simple-minded?

I guess so. We should encourage them a little bit!

Must I have a majestic boner?

No, you don’t have to have a boner. There was an early submission to the site that got an A+, which I still think is probably the best submission I ever received. And the dude was soft. It gives a sort of different vibe a little bit. It’s not so raging and in your face.

So there’s more to a dick pic than a giant dong.

Some of the best ones I’ve gotten were where the guy was actually clothed. You could sort of see the outline. It was suggestive. It was subtle. He hadn’t made his dick the whole focus. The lighting was good, and his room was clean. That’s a big one: If your room’s a pig sty, tidy it. Get it to a sort of adult level of cleanliness and then take the picture.

It’s a picture of your junk, not your junk.

It’s gross and distracting if you can see junk everywhere. And another thing that’s quite common is when guys take the picture in a mirror and it’s covered in toothpaste flecks...

Gross.

And don’t use the glow of porn on your laptop as your lighting! Lots of guys have sent me pictures of their dick with a screen in the background, with porn on it. That’s the worst—it’s never going to fly. It takes the focus away from turning the recipient on, and it’s more about, Look at me being turned on, on my own, and alone, with my dick. It’s sort of sad.

So I’ve cleaned my room, dimmed the lights, put away my comedy props. I may or may not have pants on, or a boner. I’m ready to send my dick pic to a lucky lady.

If you’re bold enough to send it by email, put something in the subject line to at least give your recipient a heads up, in case she’s at work. But Snapchat is definitely the best way to send it. It dissolves after ten seconds, which is itself erotic. And it means you can include your face, which I always encourage guys to do.

I’m going to go send a dick pic right now.

Make sure she wants to receive it! You should, at the very least, have a flirty relationship with her. Otherwise, you run the risk of harassment. At least. On a personal level, there’s really just one person that I’d want to receive a dick pic from.

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